Fireball shoots across sky, determined to be Russian rocket

Turns out it just old fashioned space junk, courtesy of the Russians.

On Tuesday around 6:15 p.m., people across Southern California, Arizona and Nevada reported seeing a fireball streak across the night sky, prompting speculation over what the source of it was.

The booster was among 16,000 of space debris tracked by the Joint Space Operations Center, which predicted the rogue SL-4 booster would soon fall from the sky several hours before the bright display lit up the Las Vegas Strip.

“It’s not something people need to worry about”, said David Wright, a space-debris expert.

A U.S. Strategic Command representative, however, told KTLA-TV Channel 5 that the fireball was a Russian rocket body.

Dozens of people took to social media to share videos and photos and marvel at the white fireball flying through the sky that some described as a shooting star. The rocket delivered into orbit the latest modification of Russian cargo spacecraft, Progress-MS-01 (first unit), with almost 2.5 tons of supplies, including food, fuel and compressed oxygen, for the expedition aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Light pollution over major metro areas might make such a flash of light hard to see.